10.28.2010

i09 interview with detention director joseph kahn

Music video director extraordinaire Joseph Kahn has been hard at work on his second feature film, the time-traveling horror comedy Detention, which has been described as "Back to the Future meets Scream, with a hefty dose of John Hughes teen movies." That sounds crazy. Crazy intriguing. Here's a recent interview with the director over at i09, with the some more details about the movie: First look at the time-traveling horror comedy we can't wait to see.

How long have you had the idea for Detention in your head? Where did the idea come from originally?

I wrote the movie with Mark Palermo, a Canadian film critic from Halifax. We started it about three years ago on a trip to the Coachella music festival, where I stated I wanted to make a movie about high school. It took a year to beat out the story, then another year to write it. To be fair, I was busy with with my day job doing videos and commercials so the writing was sporadic.

But one day the Virginia Tech massacre happened, and then I finished reading a book about Columbine. I got really angry about these young psychopaths, finally knew what our movie was about. I flew Palermo down and devoted two months. We hashed out a real draft over lots of bad diner food at 2 AM.

I'm particularly interested in the part where Kahn described (via Twitter) the movie as "the Citizen Kane of Asian nerd in love with black girl movies." If you say so, Joseph. Whatever the case, all this sounds wildly different that the director's first feature Torque, which I have decided to forget. Look to the future. You can follow Joseph Kahn on Twitter here.